Other ways I could describe them. Categories are like tags on steroids. Categories are like your troop carriers and tags are the specialist troops that live inside them. Tags are little goblins but categories are orcs.

Look, I've been up all night, I stopped making sense quite some time ago...

Watch this 7 minute video that I made to launch my fantabulous Artist's Eyeball service and you'll see that both categories and tags have their place.

What's so great about Artist’s Eyeballs?

Remember Carol Nunan, who featured in our first video? Well, Carol got her free Artist’s Eyeball on Wednesday and promptly impressed the hell out of me by staying up to midnight to revamp her sidebar. If you visit her site, you’ll see she’s also got rid of the problematic ‘Monotypes’ button that I objected to.

Here's what she wrote on her blog:

Well I won myself a free 'Artist's Eyeball' from Kirsty Hall and I received her much anticipated report today. Veeery useful. Nothing like getting an objective view point from someone who obviously knows what they are talking about and who is prepared to be brutally honest. I like that.

So... hard on the heels of her report I've been doing some serious tidying up for my blog. I've done the easy stuff first. I hope you approve Kirsty. It's still a work in progress but I have some direction now.

Damn right, I approve - way to go, Carol!

These are the kind of results that people get from The Artist’s Eyeballs. They can really light a fire under you. In a good inspirational way, not in a 'call the Fire Brigade' way. Because that would be bad.

What do I get?

A highly detailed, written report that will in no way cause your house to burn down but that will tell you what you need to fix on your website to stop people wandering around uselessly like drunken chickens.

You get a lot of eye and brain for your money: Full Eyeballs tend to be between 5 and 10 pages long, sometimes even longer. It's a big old to-do list with a fairly large amount of to-don't's thrown in. I don't just say 'do this', I also tell you why you should do stuff.

And if I can't find anything to say about your site or you don't find the report useful, I'll give you a full refund.

What if my site isn't ready yet?

There is no expiry date: you can buy an Artist's Eyeball now and use it later. Just make sure that you tell me on the order that you want to wait. It would also be helpful if you can give me a rough idea when you're likely to need it, so that I can make a note to follow up with you.

You could even treat someone to one for Christmas & I promise to wear tinsel when I write it. Although it might be a bit like giving someone a diet book for Christmas; 'Hi honey, your website sucks, Happy Holidays!'

Last chance for cheap Eyeballs

And let's face it, who doesn't want cheap eyeballs?

Blog Eyeball (including up to 3 static pages) - £50, now only £35
The Blog Eyeball is down to £35, which is £15 off - a truly delightful bargain, I'm sure you'll agree.

Full Artist's Eyeball - £100, now only £50
A Full Artist's Eyeball normally retails at £100 but during this sale I'm offering it at £50, which is a rather splendid half price.

Full Eyeball with consulting - £160, now only £100
The Full Artist's Eyeball with an extra brains consulting session is currently going for £100 instead of £160. That's a full written website analysis plus 45 minutes of follow-up on Skype where you can delve deeper into what I've recommended. It's the dinner and a date version.

Deadline

This offer closes at 5pm GMT on Friday 3rd December 2010. That's today, people! If you're going to buy one, you should do it now.

If you know you need an Artist's Eyeball but find yourself temporarily low on funds, please email me and we'll organise a payment plan that suits you. I am more than happy to do this - I've been where you are and I know what it's like (it sucks!) - all you have to do is ask.

P.S. I am going to bed now: do not panic if you email me & I don't get back to you instantly. As long as I get your email before 5pm today, we're good.

Please note:
If there's a high demand during this sale, it will take me longer than the usual 7 days to do your Eyeball.

Honeys, please do me a huge favour and pass this on by clicking on one of the share buttons below...

The Artist's Eyeballs were quite insistent that they had never had a proper launch and that not enough people knew about them. When they heard that I was meant to be launching something at the end of November for Customer Love, they started tugging on my sleeve. Since I felt kind of bad that I'd launched them accidentally and then buggered off to Holland for a week, I gave in.

Besides, it meant I didn't have to create something new - ssssh, don't tell them!

Btw, this is what I'm doing instead of a Birthday sale because My Inner Businesswoman decided that 10 days before Christmas was a mind-bogglingly stupid time to try to sell anything that wasn't Christmas related. Although if you do want to buy someone an Eyeball or a session of consulting as a Christmas present, rest assured that I will find a way of putting ribbon on it, even if I have to wear the ribbon myself.

A present for you

First of all, a fabulous freebie, wherein I demonstrate 'stuff that I know' and you get to think, 'shit, I'm doing that wrong' and rush off to your site to fix it. Even if you're not in the market for an Artist's Eyeball, I hope you'll watch this 5 minute demonstration video and share it with your friends.

Huge thanks to Carol Nunan for bravely volunteering to be a guinea pig in exchange for a free Artist's Eyeball.

Btw, this is why you should sign up for my newsletter. Last week I put a call-out to my newsletter peeps for volunteers and got a fantastic response - thanks so much to everyone who responded, I was hugely impressed at your willingness to volunteer. I've also picked a second victim, Julie Shackson: her site will feature in another demo video later in the week.

Why you should buy An Artist's Eyeball

Well, because they're awesome!

Of course I would say that, I'm their mama. However, I can report that the majority of people who've received one of these have been instantly fired up and usually started making changes to their websites straight away.

Kirsty cut right to the chase - what worked, what didn't, what would make my sales page better. I felt encouraged & excited to have some concrete steps to make improvements. I was a bit afraid the critique might hurt, but Kirsty knows how to make you feel good about what you have, while helping you make it even better.

What you get

You get a highly detailed written report that points out everything that I think you're doing wrong on your website or blog. Lest this sounds too depressing for words, rest assured that I also enthuse about the stuff you're doing well. You get a lot of eye and brain for your money: Full Eyeballs tend to be between 5 and 10 pages long, sometimes even more and even a Mini-Eyeball will usually contain several pages of suggestions.

Now I know this might not seem like the most exciting thing in the world to buy but holy cow, these are seriously useful. You get a nice big list of things to tackle and often a bit of longterm strategy thrown in for free. Instead of aimlessly going around in circles for months or years wondering why this internet lark isn't working out for you, you get pointed in the right direction at last. You can also work through things at your own pace, confident that you're making positive changes.

And if I can't find anything to say about your site or you don't find the report useful, I'll give you a full refund.

Super-duper Special Offer

I highly recommend snagging one of the larger packages because they're an amazingly sweet deal. In fact, I won't be offering these prices ever again, this is an introductory offer only.

....Drumroll please....

Mini Eyeball - £20
The mini-Eyeballs are staying at £20 because that's already ridiculously cheap and my Inner Businesswoman wasn't having anything to do with a deal on these.

Blog Eyeball (including up to 3 static pages) - £50, now only £35
The Blog Eyeball is down to £35, which is £15 off. That's some kind of complicated percentage that I can't work out because my maths guru, Colin Beveridge has gone on holiday to America. How inconsiderate!

Full Artist's Eyeball - £100, now only £50
A Full Artist's Eyeball normally retails at £100 but for 3 days only I'm offering it at half price. £50 for an entire site analysis is crazy: I had to lock my Inner Businesswoman in the basement to get away with this.

Full Eyeball with consulting - £160, now only £100
The Full Artist's Eyeball with an extra brains consulting session is currently going for £100 instead of £160. That's a full written website analysis plus 45 minutes of follow-up on Skype where you can delve deeper into what I've recommended. Total bargain.

What if my site isn't ready yet?

There is no expiry date: you can buy an Artist's Eyeball now and use it later (thanks to Skaja for asking this question). Just make sure that you tell me on the order that you want to wait. It would also be helpful if you can give me a rough idea when you're likely to need it, so that I can make a note to follow up with you.

Deadline

You've only got three days to take advantage of this: the offer will close at 5pm GMT on Friday 3rd December 2010.

If you're absolutely desperate for one but you can't afford it with Christmas coming up, email me and we'll sort something out. Please don't be shy or embarrassed. I know what it's like to need something when you're skint and while I can't lower the price any further, I'm happy to work out a payment plan with you. But you've got to brave enough to step up and ask.

Please note:
If there's a high demand during this sale, it will take me longer than the usual 7 days to do your Eyeball.

Honeys, please do me a huge favour and pass this on by clicking on one of the share buttons below...

One day I’m going to come up with a clever title for these round-ups. But not, apparently, today.

Prize Update

About a million years ago – OK, two months ago – I asked for name suggestions for my coaching service and offered a free consulting session for the winning name.

I got some wonderful ideas but none of them felt quite right to me. I’ve been brooding away on it ever since & have finally hit on the right name. The sales page for 'Pertinent Questions' will be up as soon as I've finished writing it.

I’m going to award the consulting prize to Amber Dawn for her suggestion ‘Knotty Fixes’. Even though I haven’t used it as the final name, I utterly adored this and I’m going to nab it for my sales copy. Well done, Amber.

Thanks to everyone else for their awesome suggestions: every single one of you helped so much with my tortuously slow thought process and I am deeply grateful. And I’m sorry that it took so long to update you all, I really did need to sit with it for this long.

People have been loving hard on their peeps. Here are my pick of the offers so far:

Get free help with numbers from my favourite maths tutor, Colin Beveridge. OK, so he's the ONLY maths tutor I know, but he's still my favourite.

Melissa Dinwiddie from A Creative Life is offering free Sandbox Sessions throughout November. If you’d like a bit of accountability while you work on Your Wonderful Thing, this will be right up your street. Melissa is a delightful, kind and interesting person and I’m sure she’d be a joy to work with.

My Stuff

Don't forget you can still sign up for the Within Limits class that I'm teaching with Tara Swiger on Wednesday 10th November.

Cool stuff from around the web

Pretty by Kate Makkai is 3 minutes of absolutely astounding, powerful, hard-hitting slam poetry that every woman needs to see. ‘Slam poetry?’, I hear you say. Yep. Just trust me on this one and watch it. There is one swear word in it.

This week I also fell head over heels in love with comedian and ace pianist, Tim Minchin. Most of his stuff is entirely NSFW, so again, please don’t click if that bothers you. I should also warn you that this is ridiculously, insanely catchy - I've been singing it all week.

Hey lovelies, it's been killing me to keep this quiet, so I'm chuffed to bits that I can finally announce my Super-Exciting Something.

Ta-da!

Next week I'll be teaching my first ever online class in collaboration with Tara Swiger from Blonde Chicken and Crafting A Business. As you'll see if you watch the video below, I am quite ridiculously excited about this. In fact, it was all I could do not to pepper this entire post with exclamation marks.

What's it about?

The class is called 'Within Limits' & it's for those of you who want to have a creative business despite having time or energy challenges like an illness, children or another job. I wanted to share some of the things that I've learnt from my bloody-minded determination to have an art career (and now a shiny new business), despite having Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and raising a kid. Tara and I felt that November was the perfect time to offer this class because the holiday season tends to bring those time/energy challenges into sharp relief.

When is it?

The class is on Wednesday 10th November at 3pm Eastern Time and consists of an hour-long call with Tara and I, followed by a Twitter chat. You'll then be sent a recording of the class AND a worksheet that will help you set out your own Time & Energy Budget. We'll be talking tips and more importantly, the attitudes that can help you manage your own restrictions.

What does it cost?

The class is only $35, which is outrageously good value. Just to recap, that's an online call, a Twitterchat, a recording and a worksheet, all for $35.

Oh Kirsty, please tell me more...

So, I made a little five minute video to launch the class and er, I got a bit over-excited...

This is either charming and funny OR I'm a complete dork, I haven't quite decided which yet. It makes me laugh but I suspect that may be because I'm a dork.

Buy the class

Share the news

P.S. If you'd like to share this, please click one of the social media buttons below.

And I will love you forever and come round to your house with chocolates. OK, maybe not the chocolate part because some of you are very far away but I would be very grateful and happy because I want to get this out to as many people as possible.